


Stuck In Second Gear

by Kari_Kurofai



Series: Friends!AU [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-21
Updated: 2013-07-07
Packaged: 2017-12-12 12:03:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/811410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kari_Kurofai/pseuds/Kari_Kurofai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Tales of your escapades would do little to change my already made up mind,” Thor says. “But if you are willing to share them, I will listen all the same.”</p><p> </p><p>Takes place between chapters 20 and 35 of So No One Told You</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've decided to post this in parts rather than as one huge piece as originally planned because I'm aware that I've been taking way to freakin' long to finish it, and I apologize. Italicized sections take place in Loki's past.
> 
> Special thanks to[ Kierivi ](http://kierivi.deviantart.com/art/So-No-One-Told-You-The-One-on-the-Bridge-319284484)for the lovely cosplay pics

As a method of travel, trains are particularly interesting. They’re guided along specific tracks so that they will reach specific destinations. There’s no room for error, or at least very little room, and no place to get off course along the way. The paths of trains can not be redirected or rerouted the way cars and boats and planes can. And at no point will one ever find themselves lost with little hope of return, because tracks, no matter how long, always lead somewhere.

Loki supposes the train could break down, or could crash, and could potentially halt his progress. But the likelihood of that happening is slim. Thus, he is content to merely while away the hours gazing out the window at the scenery rushing past outside. Being cooped up in the city with nothing but Central Park to see by way of “nature” has made him forget what the world truly looks like beyond smogged horizons and skyscraper-clawed skies.  So when the first swash of trees appears on the other side of the glass, a large stretch of them that mars all the space between ground and clouds that can be glimpsed through the four-sided boundaries of the window, he can’t help but let out a small gasp.

Darcy, who had previously been occupied with her iPod in the seat furthest from the pane, looks up at his quiet exclamation to glimpse the cause for herself. The lightest of smiles crosses her lips. “It’s easy to forget what the rest of the world can look like when you spend your life in the city,” she remarks aloud. “Are we stopping somewhere like this first? Someplace with forests and trees and junk?”

Loki glances at her, an expression on his face that suggests he’d temporarily forgotten she was there. “I don’t know,” he replies after a pause. “I was just going to get off when I felt like it.”

A stunned silence follows this, and Darcy gapes at him, “Uh, that’s not how trains work, dude. It’s not like a bus, you don’t just get on and get off on a whim. The tickets should have a destination on them.” Without further ado she reaches for the two ticket stubs she can see sticking out of his coat pocket on the seat across from them (which has been commandeered by Loki’s shoulder bag and Darcy’s backpack). Upon examining the little slips of paper, however, she’s startled to discover that they read “ _From: Amtrack Station, New York* To: Anywhere*”_ She stares at them for a moment, struck dumb, before blurting out, “What the actual fuck? Where did you get these? And why didn’t the ticket guy give you shit for having them?” She waves the stubs in Loki’s face, who in turn just shrugs and flashes her an innocent smile. “These are fake, aren’t they?” she demands, “Tell me they’re fake!”

“If that is what you wish to hear,” he soothes before going back to staring out the window. 

They keep to their separate seats, Loki occupied by the sights they’re passing and Darcy with her menagerie of electronics she brought with her. When she’s sure that her companion’s attention is officially distracted for the foreseeable future, Darcy takes a moment to lean back in her chair and think about things. 

She first, of course, contemplates the obvious madness that drove her to come on this unplanned trip with the seemingly equally mad brother of her best friend’s boyfriend. After a moment she brushes that thought aside, mentally apologizing for such harsh labels on both herself and on Loki. If Loki is mad, as she suspects many of the people he associates with think, then she must surely be completely off her rocker in turn. And above all, Darcy would definitely like to think herself sane. Saner than most, at least. Although jumping onto a train with someone she barely knows doesn’t really qualify as something those of sounder mind would do, especially not when said someone has confessed to violent tendencies, both towards others and himself. 

That part gives her a moment of pause, and she takes it to reflect on Loki’s oddly calm admittance of, “ _I’ve hurt people_ ,” he’d uttered just before they’d left the station. She’d still had time to back out then, and yet she hadn’t. Whether she considers that a testament of her loyalty or of her stupidity has yet to be decided. Personally, Darcy likes to think she’s made of some pretty stern, pretty stable stuff. So she’ll go with that.

“Thank you,” Loki says suddenly, just loud enough to stir her out of her thoughts. Darcy turns towards him, a bit surprised to see that his attention has been diverted from the window to her. The way he’s looking at her is not so different from the way he had been staring out the window a moment before, contemplative, thoughtful. She raises an eyebrow when he doesn’t avert his gaze after a second, a prompt for an explanation. “You didn’t have to accompany me,” he drawls at her insistence. “I feel a bit guilty for making it seem like you had no choice.”

Darcy snorts, “Yeah right. You pretty much told me you were capable of murder right before we left the station, which is the exact opposite of trying to make me come along.”

Loki lets out a soft huff of amusement, “That was hardly what I said. I only implied that I had caused others harm in my past. I never stated whether it was physical or emotional, and I certainly didn’t imply homicide.”

She narrows her eyes at him, “Manslaughter counts too, you know. And also, why do they call it manslaughter if it’s an accident? I mean, if you pull the word apart you get Man and Slaughter which seems to imply some sort of _Texas Chainsaw Massacre_ ordeal right there, and that’s definitely not an accident.”

“It is if you trip while handling a running chainsaw, let go of it, and _accidentally_ send it flying into your neighbor’s back,” Loki deadpans.

“I get the feeling you’ve given more thought to those sorts of gross scenarios than what’s healthy,” Darcy grimaces.

“Quite.”

They fall into silence again after that, content with the strangely companionable atmosphere that’s formed in the conversation’s wake. Loki leans against the window until night falls, his forehead pressed to the pane so that when he finally pulls away his skin is marked with a faint red tinge. “A little further,” he tells Darcy before he slumps back in his seat, hands over his eyes. “Tell me when we’ve gone a little further. Somewhere quiet and distant.”

Darcy isn’t too sure what that means, but she doesn’t protest when Loki has them switch seats awhile later so that she’s sitting with her shoulder to the window, and he’s curled up next to the aisle. The train falls quiet with the night, the other passengers growing hushed or wandering off to their sleeping compartments. It’s eerie with only the rush of wind and the clack-clack of the train over the tracks to fill the stillness, and Darcy’s thankful for the distraction when Loki drops his head onto her shoulder.

At this distance, his cheek against her arm and his hair brushing her neck, she notices how tired he looks. The phrase “World weary” has never seemed more appropriate, and it’s not hard to see the purple-tinted bags under his eyes, or the sharp jut of his cheekbones. She wonders, briefly, how long it’s been since he last ate, or had a decent night’s sleep. The signs of stress are clear to her, so she doesn’t mind lending her shoulder as a pillow, no matter how uncomfortable it might look from her perspective.

A few hours before dawn they creak into a small, rundown little place. Darcy reads off the sign indicating the town is called Thurmond as Loki stirs back into consciousness and says, “Here. We’re getting off here.”

As the train pulls away at their backs, there’s no doubt that this is exactly the sort of place Darcy expected them to stop. It fits Loki’s requirements exactly, quiet, distant, compact. And it’s every thing New York isn’t. When she turns to him to inquire where he thinks they’re going to stay in a little ramshackle place like this, she’s startled by the broad smile on his face. Usually, it’s easy to categorize Loki’s smiles into boxes of Real and Fake, but at the sight of this one Darcy tosses all methods of doing so in the trash with the realization that _none_ of his smiles are real. Except for possibl, the one he currently bears. Loki’s practically bouncing on his heels, shoulder bag swinging at his side as he begins to make his way across the platform towards the rickety little set of stairs on the right. 

“This is fantastic,” he breathes when she catches up to him, “Do you think they have an inn? I’ve never stayed at an inn before. Or maybe we’ll have to sleep outside.”

Darcy shivers involuntarily at the thought. Though it’s still technically summer, the thought of sleeping outdoors is not something she relishes in. “I’m sure one of the, uh . . .” She glances at the welcome sign again, “Six residents will be happy to put up with us for a bit. Maybe.” Even as she says it, she highly doubts they’ll be that lucky.

The first thing she registers, besides the fact that the place is _creepy as fuck_ , is that there’s no road. None. Nada. Zip. Just one straight line of train tracks running through the center of the town, if it can even be called that. “Fantastic,” Darcy mutters. If there’s no road, at least not one she can see from where she stands, all hope of finding a suitable place to spend the night might as well be tossed aside. 

She turns to Loki to protest, only to be met with empty darkness at her side. Panic flares in her chest until she looks towards the tracks and catches sight of where he’s wandered off to. “Can we at least stick together, please,” she snaps.

Loki looks up from where he’s balancing on one of the now-empty rails. “Nervous, are we?” he teases. Waving his hand for her to join him, he parades down the line of rail, shoulder bag swinging at his side. “You have no need to be. If anything became of you while you were in my charge Thor would have no qualms about skinning me.”

Darcy scowls and hurries to catch up to him. “I’m not in your charge,” she says. “If anyone’s being a babysitter here, it’s me.” The corner of Loki’s mouth twitches upwards. “Don’t you mock me!” Darcy hisses.

“A facial expression does not technically fall under the term “to mock,” Loki hums. “And if you will divert your attention from my amusement to the buildings on your right,” he continues, tone shifting to something resembling that of the typical tour guide, “there is what looks to be a hotel of some sort where can rest until morning.”

The hotel is, as Darcy expected it to be when she looks over, completely dark. Not only that, but it also seems to be falling apart. She’s sure she can hear its frame buckling even from this distance, creaking under the weight of old, decaying wood. “That looks . . . Perfectly safe . . .” She swallows, hoping Loki will take the hint and pick somewhere else. Maybe they could go up the hill a ways, see if any of the probably aging residents would be willing to lend them a spare room or something. Or a chair. A back stoop? Literally anything would be better than the shack of a hotel Loki has chosen.

“It looks haunted!” Loki says, voice edging towards what, if Darcy is not mistaken, sounds fairly close to a squeal. Okay then.

“Pretty sure my insurance doesn’t cover ancient hotel collapses,” she sighs, and trails behind Loki as he dashes towards the building. “Or ghost attacks.”

Unsurprisingly, the hotel meets all of Darcy’s expectations. The doors are padlocked, but it’s neither strong or expensive enough to stop Loki, who picks it in less than a minute.  God knows why it was even locked in the first place, as all she sees when Loki swings the doors is a shit ton of dust. “Hooray,” she deadpans, coughing slightly. There’s a staircase twisting up the center, rickety and missing two thirds of its steps, and a broad fireplace along the broad wall which seems to be the resting place for a few hundred dust bunnies and enough dead bugs to fill a kiddie pool. “Yeah, no,” Darcy decides after giving the place a once over, “I’d rather sleep outside.”

But Loki ignores her. There’s a rather gleeful hop to his step. The trail of footprints he leaves behind in the dust make Darcy a little nauseous however, and leave her no room to feel pleased about his unusual burst of happiness. Besides, the thing that’s making him happy is something that should logically send most people screaming. Reigning in her annoyance and mild queasiness, she finds that Loki has taken a coat out of his bag and is whirling it around a few inches above the ground, stirring up dust.

“What the f-”

“Clearing a place to sleep,” he explains before she can finish.

Darcy narrows her eyes, “If you think I’m sleeping there you’re crazier than you look. There’s probably termites in that wood! A few pounds too many and we’ll go crashing into the basement!”

“If that’s a subtle way of calling me fat, I’m afraid you’re a tad misinformed,” Loki says.

“I wasn’t. In fact, you’re scarily underweight. But even underweight could send us to our deaths. I doubt this floor could hold more than a medium sized dog on its best day.” She sighs as she realizes he’s just staring at her, clearly not reconsidering their options. “Fine. But if we’re going to make this a habit we should really invest in sleeping bags. Also,” she points a finger at him, “if I die, I’m haunting your ass for eternity.”

“I look forward to it,” Loki replies. Darcy thinks he was attempting to say it as a comfort, but it’s rather disconcerting instead.

As it turns out, she does not sleep there. Or rather, she does not sleep at all. The creaking of the upper floors and the way the wind picks up and whistles through the walls to imitate ghostly groans keeps her wide awake. 

Loki sleeps like a god damn rock.

OoOoOoOoOoO

_Loki’s first memory is of his parents fighting. He does not recall what they were fighting about, and perhaps he never quite knew what the cause was, even back then. The raised voices, however, have been lodged in the corners of his mind for as long as he can remember. They leak into the safety of his and Thor’s room down the hallway and underneath the closed door, deafening shouts that, in actuality, probably weren’t that loud at all. But to a child, small an curled and frightened in the corner, the sound is the center, breaking axis of his world._

_“It will be alright,” Thor says, a whisper between them that’s almost overshadowed by the commotion beyond the door. “They have to let you stay. So . . . So don’t cry . . .”_

_Thor wipes at Loki’s tears with trembling hands, smearing them over still baby-round cheeks. Though the action itself is comforting, the words leading up to it fill him with a sense of dread that he doesn’t understand. Stay? What does that mean? Stay in this room, where it’s safe and dark and away from the world? Stay with Thor, who dutifully guards him from whatever has caused the commotion beyond the door? Stay . . ._

_“They can’t turn you out,” Thor continues, unaware of Loki’s confusion. “Where would you go? What would you do? They have to let you stay.”_

_Where would he go indeed. Loki reaches out and fists his hands in the front of Thor’s muddied t-shirt, eyebrows furrowing as his fingers become flecked with dirt in the process. How did Thor’s clothes get so stained again? And for that matter, how did his? He regards his own attire for a moment, taking in the ripped shorts, worn, mud-splattered shirt, and fraying old coat. Where had he been to have made such a mess of himself? His knuckles, still clenched in the front of Thor’s shirt, are stress white now, shaking as he struggles to recall how he got to this room, this place, and in such a state as this._

_And Thor . . . Thor is so warm when he wraps his arms around Loki’s shoulders, calming the shudders that work their way up Loki’s spine with the security of his embrace. So warm. So unlike the cold metal chain links that held up the swings in the playground._

_That’s right. Loki freezes in Thor’s arms as the thought, the memory itches at the back of his mind. That’s right, the playground. He had been waiting, no, no, that’s not it. Something urges him to correct himself. Not waiting. No, he’d been . . . Lost. Yes, that was it. And Thor had found him shortly after it had started raining and brought him home again, because that’s what brothers do._

_They are brothers. And Loki had never waited for anyone. No, of course he hadn’t. There is no reason to wait for a brother, because having a brother, especially an older, protective one like Thor, meant that he never had to be alone._

_Because they are brothers, and thus Loki has always been here. And Thor has always been here. And they have always been together._

_“I won’t let them take you,” Thor murmurs under the crash of raised voices beyond the door. “Not ever.”_

_No, Loki thinks, of course not. Why would they have any reason to?_

OoOoOoOoOoO

“Every destination must have a road that leads to it,” Loki says airily. “At least in America during our current era.”

“Congrats,” Darcy snips. “But that was only reassuring when you’ve found the road. Now that we’ve been on it for almost two hours without a single sign of civilization, it’s no longer philosophical.”

Thurmond had exactly one road leading out of it (or into it? Both?) besides the train tracks. Saying it’s a very empty road would be an understatement. Not only have they not seen so much as a farm along it, but there also haven’t been any cars. It was all starting to make Darcy a bit stir crazy, which is saying something considering all the open space around them. “I’m a city girl,” she rationalizes to herself, “It’s only natural this many trees and bushes and . . . And nature would make me start to lose it. That and the fact that my iPod has been out of juice for an hour.” She holds up her phone, “And there’s no cell signal either. Lovely. We’re going to die out here.” 

When Loki doesn’t appear to have heard her dismayed statement, she shouts, “We’re going to die out here!” for added emphasis. 

After a moment, Loki turns to stare at her, far too calm about the whole situation for her liking. “If this is really so horrendous an ordeal for you, feel free to turn back anytime. For I can assure you this little jaunt through the woods will most likely be the dullest of our escapades. And one of the safest.”

Darcy’s jaw drops. “What the actual fuck do you have planned.”

A short, clipped laugh erupts from Loki’s mouth, “Planned? Nothing at all. I’m just speaking from experience.”

“ . . . What the hell kinda shit have you experienced, then?”

“This and that.” He slows his pace a bit as Darcy stops to wave her phone around hysterically in the air. “You know,” he says, eyebrows furrowed, “it would be much more effective if we kept walking.” Darcy ignores him as she attempts to jump to get a signal on her unresponsive cell phone. “While entertaining, dancing about like a loon won’t really get us anywhere,” Loki sighs. As an afterthought, he inquires, “Who are you trying to call, anyways?”

“Clint.” Darcy futilely waves her phone over her head one last time before letting her arm fall to her side. “Or Jane. Or anyone who will willingly listen to my last will and testament before I perish in this horrible swath of _nature_.”

Loki snorts, “You make it sound like the wilderness is kin to politicians.” He holds out a hand, one eyebrow raised as Darcy just stares at him in return. “Phone.”

Hesitantly, she drops it in his waiting palm. “You know how to make it work or something - Oh my god!” Her hands fly to her mouth to stifle her horrified shriek as Loki turns on his heel and chucks the phone into the trees as hard as he can. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Darcy snaps once the shock has started to subside (at least enough for her to regain the use of the English language). “That’s the newest iPhone! I saved up for months for that thing and you just . . . You threw it into the woods! What the hell!”

Loki’s expression remains entirely impassive as she stomps past him into the tree line, and he offers no explanation to quell her mounting confused rage. “Seriously? Seriously?!” She yells as she makes her way through waist-high grass in search of her long gone cell phone. “Did someone drop you on your head as a child? Did all the drugs actually succeed in rotting your brain down to a few specks of idiocy and assholery? Or were you just born with one to many douche chromosomes?” Ignoring her, Loki continues down the road, hands shoved deep into his pockets and his shoulders hunched against the afternoon wind. 

Darcy doesn’t notice his departure until she looks up with a triumphant raise of her arms, recovered phone in hand, and finds an empty road before her. “Well, crap,” she mutters, and wastes no time taking off down the blacktop after him. 

Her phone is, as expected, a little worse for wear after its traumatic flight into the forest. Darcy picks at a long scratch across the screen with a nail as she walks, irritated that she didn’t invest in a sturdier case (the one she’d had on it had disappeared entirely by the time she found the phone, and god only knows where it was now). She’s fairly certain there’s a bug of some sort sitting in the headphone jack, but she’s not brave enough to investigate that, so she holds it a few inches away from her in case the thing decides to fly out any time soon. Most of the dirt has been wiped off, save for a suspicious black stain that’s appeared along the back, smudging the Apple logo into a fair impression of a demonic sprite. All in all, though, it’s in working condition. She’ll take it as a stroke of good luck, considering how hard Loki threw the thing.

She finds him about five minutes up the road, loitering beneath a sign that reads “Welcome to Harvey.” And yes, loitering is the correct word for the image Loki’s created in that moment, with a nonchalant look pasted on his face , his hands in the pockets of a too-big black hoodie and his legs crossed at the ankles as he leans against one of the sign posts . He eyes Darcy with disinterest when she approaches, and that alone is enough to prompt her to speak.

“That was a dick move back there, you know.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Loki dismisses, gaze casually sliding away from her to glance down the street stretching into the town below. 

Darcy scowls, “It wasn’t one, but sure. You do that.”

Ignoring her entirely now, he straightens and begins to make his way through the scruffy grass lining the roadside. Darcy follows without further comment. It’s weird, she thinks, how different he can be from day to day, or even hour to hour. There’s no skip in his step anymore, as there had been the night before, and now Loki walks ahead of her with shuffling, dragging movements dominating his gait. She worries that maybe she said something, did something this morning that ticked him off, but she knows he’ll never say what it was. Loki’s what Clint would call a “Bottler.” He tucks his emotions away and lets them simmer until they finally reach a boiling point, and then all hell breaks loose. Darcy can’t help but wonder if she’s already seen the extent of such a boiling point, the grim smiles and hazed, red eyes as Loki had yelled at her under the cloud of a high. For most people, that would be the furthest extreme.

She fears that for Loki it might only have been another method of repression. 

The thought makes her skin crawl. The idea that there’s something worse lurking under the surface of Loki’s already often cruel smile is nothing short of terrifying to her. And while she dreads the prospect of glimpsing it, of having to handle the twisted mess she know Loki has the capability to become, a prospect, an idea, a thought alone is not enough to make her turn on her heels and flee back to New York.

Not yet.

Besides, what would she even do there, anyways? Sit around in her apartment, call in sick to work (again), read a few terrible supernatural romance novels and sulk in bed all day? No, no. As much as Darcy knows how easily she could fall into such a routine (again), that doesn’t mean she has to. And quite frankly, she’d been getting a bit sick of watching everyone be all . . . Gushy. And nauseatingly in love. They were currently barely a step above cheesy supernatural romances in her opinion.

So her current options are Loki, or chilling alone at home. Neither of which are very good options, but que sera sera or whatever. 

Besides that, she’s honestly worried about Loki. It’s been less than a month since she’d trashed his stash (his rather extensive, disturbingly well supplied stash), and she’s no stranger to the wiles of quitting cold turkey. His speedy recovery might be attributed to the fact that he’s gone through it all before, though Darcy suspects the truth is just that Loki’s holding up by sheer willpower alone. 

Loki is not one for weakness, not his own or that of anyone else. And such habits, dangerous as they are, are a weakness. He will not slip as long as Darcy keeps a careful eye on him, he will not dare. He will not let her see him on his knees even a metaphorical sense. 

Thus, the relapse and the recovery, like his emotions, end up bottled up inside him.

Darcy wonders how much he can hold in his heart before it finally just gives out on him. Or bursts.

They find an information center a little ways into Harvey. Darcy crosses her fingers that whoever’s there will be able to steer them in the right direction to a Greyhound station (which is apparently Loki’s next choice in method of travel), only to groan when the attendant points them towards a highway out of the area. 

“There’s one over in Beckley, it’s only about twenty minutes south,” the attendant instructs, far too cheery for Darcy’s liking. She’s pretty sure this little ditch of a town only has like forty residents though, so she can’t really begrudge the guy for being exited about seeing new people. They’re probably the first human beings to pass through the place in days (which is the logical amount of time, rather than the millennium Darcy wants to put her money on). 

Loki leans against the service desk, nauseatingly flirty with the man behind it as he drawls, “And how far would that be walking distance?”

The guy blinks at them, a little stunned, “Five or six hours, maybe. You really want to walk there?”

“We’re not in possession of a car at the moment.” Loki explains, one finger twirling lazy circles over the hardwood. Darcy barely refrains from rolling her eyes. “Any chance we could get a little assistance?”

The guy gives them a sheepish grin, “Sorry, I can’t leave the station. And my girlfriend’s bringing me lunch soon and she’d flip if I was gone.”

“Fine.”

The speed at which Loki immediately abandons his endeavors is too much for Darcy not to laugh. He turns and wordlessly marches towards the door while the poor Joe Schmoe behind the desk is still gaping at them. “Sorry about him,” Darcy says between giggles, and then they’re off again, Darcy tagging along in Loki’s wake as he stomps his way back up to the main road.

The walk to the Greyhound station is, quite frankly, a pain in the ass. Darcy whines about it for the first hour before giving up, if only to save her breath. The road there is far from a straight line, and the hills, even as short as they are, are enough to send her into a fit of wheezing when they pause at the top. “If I’d known dicking around the countryside with you would be this strenuous I would have gone to the gym more,” she pants when she catches up to Loki again, aggravated that he hasn’t once broken his easily paced stride. He’s not even sweating. What the actual fuck. If Darcy didn’t know any better, she’d start suspecting the guy was some sort of superhuman or alien or something else absurd. The fact that he is related to Thor, however, just about covers all the bases when it comes to Loki’s oddities. “Aren’t you tired at all?” she asks, attempting a light jog to keep up with him.

“Exhausted,” Loki deadpans, not even bothering to spare her a glance. 

Darcy grits her teeth, biting back the sarcastic retort and letting it sit and itch on the tip of her tongue. Jesus Christ he was a dick. “You’re the type who does yoga or some other weird ninja exercise thing, aren’t you,” she says instead. 

“Yoga is hardly a skill of ninja culture. But yes, I do partake in the discipline now and again.”

“The only exercise I get is lifting the remote control.” Darcy mimes flipping the channels on her flat screen (which she’s very proud of having saved up for), and grins at him. 

Loki pauses, his feet halting along the roadside for the first time in hours. “If this is too much for you, you’re free to leave anytime you wish.” This time, he does look at her, cold green eyes shifting to her and narrowing. Darcy swallows. “I didn’t ask you to come.”

And that’s . . . True. It’s true. Darcy knows he didn’t, not verbally anyways. She’d been there when he planned to leave, two sets of hands had traced the highways and byways of the world together. She’d been there after Thor had cut his hair, helped him brush the mix of ebony and gold locks off the floor and into the trash. She’d been there when he’d left the note, when his hands had shook while penning that single sentence. He hadn’t asked her. Loki wasn’t the type to ask for favors, at least not for ones he couldn’t return in full.

But she knew, knew the second that she’d found him smoking in the alleyway and found the needle marks bruising their way up his arms from wrist to elbow, that she couldn’t leave him alone. 

“You don’t have to be here,” Loki reiterates, a challenging glint in his eyes that immediately makes Darcy take a step back. “I don’t need a babysitter, or a dog walker, or a  . . . A sober companion or whatever the hell you think you’re doing.”

_“I won’t be the stone that weighs anyone down.”_

Oh. So that was it. “I’ve got you pinned, you know.” She smiles, moving to get a little ways ahead of him and up the next hill. “You can be an asshole all you want, but it’s gonna take a lot more than that to scare me away. I’m not here because I have to be, I’m here because I want to be.”

She’s at the top of the next rise by the time Loki moves again, speaks again, his retort all but lost in the distance between them. “You’re an idiot.”

“I know. Now hurry up, I want to try and catch a bus before the sun sets so we’re not stuck out here as ready-made bear food.”

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

_Sleipnir is born in the spring._

_Loki and Thor sneak into the stables on the large ranch’s property an hour before the sun rises, just minutes after they see the lights of the veterinarian’s car pull into the driveway. Their parents would kill them if they knew they’d slunk out of bed and across the yard at this time of day, or so Thor claims. Loki’s fairly certain it’s all an over dramatized farce, which is exactly why he shares none of Thor’s hesitation when he peeks over the top of one of the stalls and into the next, where the beautiful black mare is being held during her late pregnancy. The vet is standing there, his back to them as he speaks with Frigga. Loki ducks down again when he realizes their mother is in a perfect position to spot her delinquent sons._

_“What’s happening?” Thor hisses near his ear, hands fisted into the front of Loki’s thin coat. “Has the foal been born yet? I want to see!”_

_Loki hushes him with a finger to his brother’s lips, freezing when he hears the shuffling sounds of two pair of boots straw on the other side of the wood that separates the two parties. “No. Not yet. Be quiet.”_

_Thor pouts, bottom lip sticking out as he lets go of Loki and makes as if to clamber up the bale of hay his sibling had only just descended from for a peek of his own. Loki tugs him back down just in time as the vet actually becomes visible above them, his upper body casting a shadow into the next stall. Thor glares up at the vet and mutters, “He’s in the way. I want to see Svaðilfari’s child.”_

_“It’s not here yet,” Loki reminds, his voice barely a whisper. Though he does not fear a punishment from his parents for their curiosity, the terror of being discovered breaking the rules it not something he relishes experiencing. “And it’s Hveðrungr’s foal too.”_

_“But Svaðilfari is my steed.” Thor’s chest puffs out as he brags, and Loki barely refrains from rolling his eyes. How his brother got to be so arrogant he’ll never know._

_“Your steed that you’re still too small to ride,” he retorts, smirking when Thor deflates a bit._

_“Father says next year, when I’m eight . . .”_

_“That’s a whole year away.”_

_The argument settled, or at least put on hold for the moment, they return to listening against the side of the stall, ears pressed to the cool wood. However, there’s not much to hear other than their mother and the vet’s reassuring whispers coupled with the pants and heaves of the mare, Hveðrungr. As usual, Thor’s patience is about as thick as the average paper napkin, and after a minute or two he lets out a frustrated little sound and tries to scale the hay bale. Too late, Loki tries to tug him back down, but Thor’s already upon it, raising himself for a cautious glimpse into the stall. After a pause, he grins and motions for Loki to join him. “You can see the head!”_

_Loki immediately scrambles up beside him, now heedless of whether or not they’re caught. He’s more concerned with catching the last few seconds of the birth than a not getting his desserts for a week. Thor is correct in his observation, to Loki’s growing horror. He’s heard the term “Miracle of birth” before, but he’s pretty sure whoever coined it was mistaken. Because from where he’s standing, balanced on an old bale of hay with just his nose up poking over the side of the stall, it looks like something out of a horror movie. It’s . . . Disgusting. That’s really the only word for it. It’s only through sheer defiance, and not wanting to be outdone by Thor’s unsqueamish courage, that keeps his eyes locked on the sight until the very end._

_And then the foal is lying on the floor of the stall, sticky and wet with stray bits of straw and hay clinging to it’s new little body. “A colt!” Thor exclaims, forgetting the need to be discreet for a moment. Loki lets out something embarrassingly akin to a squeak as Frigga’s eyes immediately zero in on them._

_“Come and see then,” she sighs after a pause, waving a hand at them to enter through the stall door like proper children. Thor of course ignores this and promptly heaves himself over the side instead. Once they’re standing beside her, Loki on her left and Thor on her right with her hands curled warningly around their shoulders, she says. “He’s trying to walk, see?”_

_“Already?” Loki gasps._

_“Horses can walk almost as soon as they’re born,” the vet explains as he pulls instruments out of his bag. “And once he’s on his feet I can give him a checkup just to make sure everything is alright.”_

_“I see . . .” Loki says, though he really doesn’t._

_The colt has raised himself to his knees, his limbs wobbly and uncoordinated as he tries to push himself to his feet. Loki’s beginning to think his mother and the vet are mistaken, especially when the little colt stumbles into the first step, legs buckling under him and bearing him back down to the ground. He tenses, liquid fear pumping from his heart to his veins. What happens to horses who are too weak to walk? Perhaps it’s the same as it is for people who are too weak, too burdensome. Loki shudders, pushing the thought down down deep, back where it came from, and locking it away. No, the colt will walk. He’ll be strong, of that Loki is certain._

_“Walk,” he pleads, just loud enough for his own ears to hear._

_The colt nickers in return, eyes wide and blinking fast as it pushes itself up onto flimsy thin legs again and takes its first full steps. Something in Loki’s chest flutters with relief, with joy, with some unnamed emotion that’s beyond human description. The colt totters towards its mother first, leaning up to nuzzle her before it ducks around the waiting vet and makes a beeline towards Frigga and her sons._

_Loki freezes, shock racing up his spine as the little colt nuzzles into his stomach. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands until he clumsily twists them into the bristle short, still damp mane along the back of the colt’s neck._

_“He likes you,” Frigga murmurs, patting Loki on the head. “He wants you to name him.”_

_“Oh,” Loki gapes. “But I . . . I don’t . . .” He has difficulty wrapping his tongue around the old words that run in his family’s blood, and his mind draws up a complete blank._

_“Something strong,” Thor suggests, clearly already musing about what names to suggest should Loki fail to produce a decent one._

_Frigga shakes her head, “Whatever name you give him will be the right one, Loki.”_

_Loki stands there a minute more, running his fingers up and down the back of the colt’s neck as he frantically gropes about for a name. “S . . .” he starts, thinking of the stallion father’s name, “ . . . Sleipnir.”_

_Thor makes a face. Frigga smiles approvingly, “A perfect name. And I’m sure he will be a brilliant steed for you, Loki.”_

_Blinking a few times, Loki tilts his head back to stare up at her, “What? He’s . . . He’s mine?”_

_“If you want him.”_

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

Sometimes, Darcy likes to pretend she’s the heroine of some fantastical quest, or the protagonist of one of those slice-of-life sitcoms she addictively watches, or even the star of a cheesy, stereotypical music video promoting why being female, fab, and single is the way to go. This is not one of those times.

No, no . . . This is one of the times when Darcy finds herself wondering what cruel god plucked her out of her rather humdrum life and into a mess of craziness, mixed up emotions, and general whatthefuckery. There is, of course, a single “god” who’s responsible, but Darcy doesn’t have it in her to place any blame on him. After all, Loki is just as much a victim of it all as she is, if not more so.

It’s weird, she thinks, how different people look when they sleep. While awake, Loki is a contrast, an oxymoron. His body is relaxed, lithe and open in his stance and movements, almost vulnerable. His face however, is guarded. With narrowed eyes and a tight, restrained twist of his mouth, Loki keeps himself in check, and barricades his emotions from the rest of the world. Awake, Loki is collected. Asleep, and everything shifts. Currently, he’s curled up on the seat beside Darcy, deep enough in his dreams that the roll and bump of the Greyhound bus over pothole-pattered roads doesn’t disturb him. His knees are pulled up almost flush up against his ribs, stopped only by the curl of his arms between sternum and thigh. All of his soft, vulnerable areas are covered, protected in the tuck of his body. And where his face while waking is an impenetrable wall, here it’s exposed. Darcy watches him breathe, watches his eyebrows scrunch up and his incisors catch his lip as the first pale flush and sweat of a nightmare takes hold. As long as he’s asleep, she can read him like a book, the gates he bars to her and keeps so well fortified are left open.

Perhaps, she thinks, that’s why he has so much trouble sleeping. Loki is a man who would rather shield his feelings than his vital organs, the sort who would rather get shot in the gut before being forced to spill the inner workings of his mind and heart. Darcy doesn’t pity him for this, but she doesn’t admire him either. It’s a hard way to live, and she doesn’t envy him in the slightest.

However, she can relate. Darcy’s not afraid to admit she’s been around the block a few times, taste tested a quite a few things and quite a few people. In the typical sense of the term, she is not wise. She fumbles with her words more often than she makes complete, sensible sentences. But in the sense of the world, not the word, Darcy is the very definition of wise.

As a child who grew up shifting between foster homes and her addict mother’s care, settling down in somewhere for too long makes her uneasy. It’s a sign, she knows, that something, somehow, will eventually go wrong. She can find her way in any big city, they’re all the same after all, and doesn’t need a phonebook to figure out who to get information from and which places are safe to hide. Darcy brings years of work with her wherever she goes, skills and experience with everything from fast food and telemarketing to lock picking and the wiles of manipulation. Just by looking, she can tell who will break her heart and who might actually be worth her time, the difference between a douche in the making and a prospective companion. 

This is where she stumbles, because Loki is a mixture of the two. Half the time, he scares the shit out of her. There’s a dark glint to his gaze that makes her shiver and the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. But then, there’s moments like this, moments where she can read him like an open book and can’t help but give in to the tug that bids her to stay. For some reason she can’t quite yet discern, that pull is stronger than the one that screams at her to flee.

Running away would be the easier, safer, _smarter_ option, of that she’s very sure. Good thing smarter doesn’t always equal wiser.

Turning her attention away from Loki, her eyes shift to their bags lying at their feet. Though the phrase “Curiosity killed the cat” is a well known idiom to her, it’s never been a warning she’s heeded. It’s better to be curious, she figures, than oblivious. Curiosity led to things like the light bulb and the telephone, and while she’s sure snooping around to Loki’s things won’t result in a discovery of that merit, it might just help her understand him better.

And currently, understanding is what she wants more than anything. Understanding will explain the gaps and silences between them, the hint of malice and cloak of anguish that always seems to surround him, and perhaps even the reason she’s here, in this cramped little bus seat, letting herself be carried away to unknown destinations because of him.

Without further ado, she plucks Loki’s shoulder bag off the dingy, suspiciously stained bus floor. Held at arm’s length, the thing isn’t very interesting. It’s very plain for a bag supposedly owned by Loki, a guy who dresses himself with enough flash to blind a Cullen. There are a number of scuffs in the material, tiny tears and worn areas that betray its age. She wouldn’t be surprised to find out he’d had the thing since his school days. There’s a single keychain dangling from one of the side pocket zippers, small enough to go unnoticed to most. Darcy smiles at the sight of it, mouth quirking upwards at the wobbling googly eyes of the little green rubber frog. Oddly enough, the keychain is in better shape than the bag as a whole, which makes her think it was a recent gift (from Thor?), one that may have been meant to be a tiny companion for a lonely traveler. She unclips the flap as quietly as she can, cautious about waking Loki should he admonish her for snooping. The inside of the flap comes as a shock to her, and she has to pause to drink it all in.

There are over a hundred badges sewn onto the underside of the bag’s flap. They range in size, small ones taking up the left over spaces between the larger, more elegant designs. At first, Darcy thinks there might be a pattern to them, or a characteristic to tie them all together and create significance. But there is none. Some badges seem to be souvenirs, and are embroidered with state emblems and house crests. Others are simple little animals, vehicles, or letters, and are about as flimsy and cheap looking as any child’s patch found in a craft store. Darcy traces a few of them, careful not to let her nails catch on the thread they’ve been so lovingly pinned with. 

Next, she investigates the main pocket, which at first glance seems to defy the rules of physics. For a moment she has to look at the outside of the bag again, confirming it’s ordinarily sized, and that the amount of clothes stuffed into the inside is just as absurd as it looks. “It’s like the freakin’ TARDIS in here,” she mumbles, poking at what looks like a whole dresser drawer’s worth of outfits. Deciding to leave them undisturbed, lest she’s unable to pack them in with the same fucking-with-physics skill, she moves on to the second biggest pocket, which seems to hold a mixed plethora of candy, something which holds no secrets for her to unravel.

By now, Darcy is beginning to become discouraged. Loki doesn’t seem to have packed anything he doesn’t need, and she’s already well aware of his clothing and eating habits that she doesn’t need confirmation of them. Then again, she doesn’t really know what she was expecting to find. Drugs? No, she’d flushed and disposed of them all. A photo album? Something sentimental? Really now, how many times has she heard Loki snort out the word “Sentiment” with disdain? He wouldn’t cling to trinkets or heirlooms that would reveal his inner workings in any way.

Sighing, about to give up, Darcy sifts through toiletries in the third pocket, and finally moves on to the last inner pocket, the one that’s tucked just inside the third, hidden to the average nincompoop, and Darcy is no such thing. The zipper is a little jammed, as if it hasn’t been used as often as the others, and it takes Darcy a minute to get it to glide smoothly along the teeth and reveal the contents to her. 

She almost drops the bag when her eyes fall upon the thing.

Darcy is not entirely unfamiliar with guns. In all honesty, one might in fact call her overly familiar with them. She grew up on and off the streets of New York City, for fucks sake, it would be odd if she wasn’t. So it is that, without even touching it, she can tell that the safety is on, and by putting two fingers under the handle and testing its weight, that it’s also unloaded. After poking around a bit more she finds a case of bullets tucked away in the corner of the same pocket, unsealed but untouched. All in all, she doesn’t know what to make of the discovery. The fact that it’s clearly never been used is one matter, but the fact that it’s here at all is another one entirely. A gun in the hands of someone like Loki might, well, prove to be extremely volatile. As all guns are, she supposes. Except Loki isn’t like most gun holders. Though he tends to bottle up his emotions, by doing so he puts himself in a position to, on occasion, react entirely on impulse. Darcy has seen the sorts of things that result from the mixture of firearms and impulse, and the thought of Loki being involved in anything similar threatens to make bile rise to her throat. 

“See something you like?”

Her eyes snap up and she freezes, one hand still in the bag. Loki’s staring straight at her, leaning back in the seat beside her with his feet propped on the arm rest between them and his arms folded behind his head. He gazes at her impassively, as if he doesn’t care that she’s digging through his things without permission. When she swallows nervously he merely smiles in return. It’s a very different expression from the one she glimpsed in Thurmond, chilling and clearly false. 

“I-” she starts, heart hammering in her chest. Darcy knows, or at least hopes, that Loki’s heart isn’t quite yet as cold as his smile. Now is as good a time as any to test that theory. “I’m sorry, I-”

Loki stalls her by digging the toe of his shoe into her side, catching her just enough off guard that she falls silent. “I honestly don’t care,” he says dully. “And technically, it is fair since I looked through your bag earlier.”

Darcy stares at him for a long moment, torn between being upset by this revelation and just being really _really_ confused, as she’s sure she never left her bag alone with Loki at any point during their trip. A shift in conversation seems like the best approach. “Do we need to talk about this?” She gestures to the handgun sitting in the bottom of the pocket. Loki raises an eyebrow.

“I’d rather not.” He reclines so that his back is bent over the far armrest, arms stretching over his head and out into the aisle of the bus. “What I choose to purchase and carry on my person is my own business, don’t you think?” 

For awhile, Darcy stays silent, mulling this over in her mind before she decisively reaches into the bag and pulls out the case of bullets. “Fine. But as long as you hold on to it, I’ll be keeping these.”

“I can buy those in any Walmart in the country, you know,” he deadpans. 

“Yes, but you’ll be in all of those Walmarts with _me_ , so . . .” She pockets the case, returns the shoulder bag to the floor, and settles down in her seat again. 

Loki raises a thin eyebrow, studying her for a moment before replying, “I can’t help but wonder how long it will be until such seemingly stubborn wills run their course. I am not a creature that can be tamed, Miss Lewis, and you would best do well to remember that.”

Darcy karate-chops his leg, smirking when Loki scrambles to sit up and stare at her in surprise. “And you’d best do well to remember that if you call me ‘Miss Lewis’ again, I’ll hit you.”

He returns this warning with a disbelieving snort and shifts in his seat until he’s resting his heels on the top of the next row, just centimeters from the head of whoever is sitting in front of them. His eyes slide over to her, challenging, daring her to scold him, but Darcy merely copies his actions. The position is a little more difficult for her, and she envies Loki’s long legs and flexibility that allow him to contort in such a way. “I’m not someone who runs screaming from a little danger, you know,” she says when she finally gets her feet up onto the seat in front of her. “So your childish antics aren’t going to scare me away.”

“Your actions towards my firearm suggest otherwise.”

“Guns aren’t childish, they’re weapons. And I don’t really feel like allowing something like that to remain in your hands.”

“Because you’re scared?” 

There’s something odd about Loki’s tone when he asks this. It reminds Darcy of oil, thick, sticky, dark, poisonous, and seconds away from catching fire. She turns her head towards him, eyes locking with his. Oil isn’t dangerous, not from a distance, but it’s tempting, a coveted substance that dares her to tread where she’s not yet been invited. And he’s waiting for a response, his gaze unwavering. “Yes,” she says finally. Loki sinks a bit into his seat, eyes breaking contact with hers and his shoulders stiffening. “But not of you.”

The moment wherein Loki reacts to this revelation ticks by. His eyes register it first, widening in their surprise, closely followed by a sharp twist of his neck as he turns to gape at her. She watches his fingers tighten against the armrests on either side, nails cutting into the already worn checkered fabric. Quite honestly, surprising him is beginning to become a hobby of hers. In a way, it’s almost heartbreaking how easy it is to startle him, to say something unexpected. The thought that such reassurances, such niceties and promises, are clearly so rare for him strikes a harsh chord in her. “A child is capable of firing a gun,” she says carefully, “without understanding the consequences.”

“I’m not a child,” he interrupts stiffly.

“No, but you’re as impulsive as one. I’m not scared of you, Loki.” Her hand falls to her pocket, fingers slipping inside to brush against the case of bullets. “But I am scared of guns. And I’m scared of the mentality they can instill in a person when held.”


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Idiocy in action doesn’t make idiocy in mind,” Darcy snaps.

__

_The first time Loki falls for Thor is when he’s eight, though he doesn’t put name to the emotion until many years later._

_It’s a cold February afternoon, early enough in the year that snow still clings to the ground and the trees, but late enough that the forest on the property is beginning to sing of the coming warmer days. Loki blows into his gloved palms, catching the visible steam of his breath inside them and rubbing them together in the crisp air. Sleipnir stamps at the ground impatiently and Loki can feel the stallion’s muscles shifting against his calves. “You’ll churn up the dirt if you keep on like that,” Loki warns, already noticing the streaks of earth that Sleipnir has revealed from under the frost and snow. “It’ll make it that much harder to run.” Sleipnir ignores him and continues to gouge scars in the ground with his hooves. “Sometimes,” Loki sighs against his fingers, “I wonder if your sire was a mule.”_

_A laugh echoes through the trees and Loki straightens in his saddle. “He takes after you, brother.” Thor’s steed is quite impressive when it emerges into the clearing, head held high as he tosses melt water from his dark mane, an image that does not quite yet match his rider. Though he’s already a bit beefier and taller than most children his age, the fact remains that Thor has only just hit double digits, and his stature has a ways to go before it can match that of Svaðilfari. “Shall we set the boundaries for our little competition?” Thor inquires. To Loki’s irritation, he appears largely unfazed by the cold, bare fingers gripping Svaðilfari’s reigns without a shiver in them._

_“I thought we agreed to the far pine and back,” Loki says, unable to keep his teeth from chattering a little around the words._

_Thor hums in acknowledgement, “Aye. But those are the parameters we always use. Why not go further today? Say, to the ash grove?” Loki frowns. While Sleipnir is fast, he has yet to take on the distances his father can gallop while maintaining his pace. Thor’s horse is a trained champion, whereas his offspring is still learning. “If you’re scared of losing, we can just race our normal route . . .” Thor glances at him, the thin upturn of his mouth challenging Loki’s hesitation._

_“The ash grove is fine,” Loki grits out. “But you’d better not come whining to me when I win.” His brother’s laughing retort sets Loki’s blood on fire, and he grips the reigns tight against his gloved palms. “Keep your mouth open like that and you’ll find it full of snow.”_

_Still laughing, Thor forces out a breathless, “Whatever do you mean?”_

_Loki smirks, “I mean that bullheaded confidence will leave you to eat my dust.” He nudges his heels into Sleipnir’s sides and they’re off, ice and snow kicking up behind them as they race through the clearing and into the cover of the trees. It’s an underhanded trick, Loki knows, but without it he’d never gain an upper hand on Thor._

_Already he can hear Svaðilfari’s hoof beats close behind, picking up pace with every second. Loki steers Sleipnir through the trees, the younger horse’s smaller size an advantage as he makes a sharp turn between two broad oaks that Thor will have no choice but to go around. He leans forward as they hurtle over a frost-licked log, an unintentional, elated whoop escaping his lips when they touch the earth again and continue on without a single break in Sleipnir’s strides. The winter wind whips his hair back and bites at his skin, but he pays it no heed. He’s ahead, for once he’s still ahead of Thor, and nothing will stop him now._

_Faintly, he hears Thor calling out to him, but his voice is caught in the wind, a mere, distant whisper that Loki pays no attention to as they weave between the trees._

_“Loki!”_

_He won’t slow down now, trickery or not he fully intends to win._

_“Loki!”_

_He imagines what his father’s face will look like when he returns, for once triumphant. Will he look upon him with pride?_

_“Loki!”_

_He will be equal to his brother, younger in years but no longer in merit. “Come on,” he urges to Sleipnir, the aspen grove within sight._

_“Loki!”_

_And then the world falls out from underneath them. Loki has a split second to feel his heart sink into his stomach, to hear Sleipnir’s frightened cry and Thor’s scream before he’s plunged into cold, breathless, pain. It’s instinct alone that makes him release Sleipnir’s reigns and kick away from the flailing horse, head breaching up from water to air as panic begins to curl icy fingers around him. The river, that’s right. There was a river to the left of the grove, invisible beneath the thin ice and layer of snow. Any breath that’s in his lungs to scream with is push out of him in a gasp as he tumbles back beneath. His hands claw at the water uselessly, incapable of righting him in the push and spin of the current. Trying to find the surface is impossible, and every time he thinks part of him has broken free into the air he finds himself head over heels again. And, gods, it’s cold. So cold. Cold and dark and deep and deadly._

_His fingers catch something just before strong hands fist in the front of his shirt and pull until Loki collides with something solid. Warm, he registers vaguely, tangling himself around the thing that’s gripping him so tightly it hurts. Warm._

_And then there’s air. It burns his lungs with every sharp, wheezing inhale and cough. The world is still spinning, even when he finds his back against snow and stiff earth, and the only thing that grounds him is the shaking body pressed against his, still warm despite the water that’s soaked through both their clothes. Loki tips his head to the side, to the river where Sleipnir is climbing out of unaided, shaking water from his mane as if the ordeal had been nothing more than a dip in the pool for him. The hands fisted in his shirt move to his face, forcing him to look up into furious blue eyes._

_“Next time I call you,” Thor says between gritted, chattering teeth, “you listen, understand?” Loki doesn’t respond, doesn’t move, unable to tear his eyes away from that heated gaze. Thor shakes him, nails digging into the back of Loki’s neck. “Understand?! I could have lost you! You could have died because of your stubbornness! No prize is worth your life!”_

_Loki blinks, vaguely aware that the world still feels like its tilting beneath him. “I didn’t . . .”_

_“Didn’t what?” Thor snaps. “Didn’t mean to? Didn’t think? Didn’t remember the river was here?” A sharp sob escapes him, and Loki’s eyes widen as Thor’s head drops down to his chest._

_Every muscle in Loki’s body tenses as Thor heaves with choking, breathless sobs. It’s alarming, and it knocks the air from Loki’s lungs faster than the water had. Thor has fallen from trees and from horseback, scraped his knees, cut his hands on broken glass, and broken his arm during little league soccer, but not once has he ever cried over his injuries. For a moment Loki thinks that Thor has hurt himself, bumped or banged or bruised something while rescuing him from the river. He moves shaking hands up Thor’s chest and sides, searching for a jut of bone or wash of blood. Finding nothing, he clenches his fingers against Thor’s coat and pleads, “Where are you hurt? I can’t find it. Thor, I-”_

_Thor shakes his head, “Y-you are a fool, brother.”_

_The revelation dawns on Loki slowly, starting with a painful, knowing clench of guilt in his gut that works its way up to his heart. Oh . . ._

_It’s an odd feeling, almost an uncomfortable one to know that his brother’s tears are for him, to realize that such sobs have not wracked his body since he was naught but a babe and yet are now willingly voiced for his sake. Thor’s frame shakes with each trembling, gasping breath that warms Loki’s skin where his brother’s face is pressed into the space between neck and shoulder. Loki reaches up and curls the fingers of one hand into Thor’s hair and rests the other hand along the line of Thor’s spine, his own chilled shivers forgotten in the wake of Thor’s tears._

_“I’m sorry,” he whispers, the words catching in his throat. “I’m sorry.” Loki repeats it, over and over and over again until Thor stops crying, until he wipes the tears from his eyes and Loki knows with sudden, aching clarity, that he would walk to the ends of the earth if it meant he could prevent Thor from ever being in such a state again. “I’m sorry,” he says again and again and again, all the way home until Thor has lit the log in the fireplace and wrapped him up in one of their mother’s best quilts, finally replying with a murmured, “I know.”_

_It’s an odd feeling to know that you are so loved, and to realize that your own affections are of a fiercer, stronger nature than first perceived._

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

They transfer buses at Savannah, Georgia, and make their way to Macon. Darcy wishes she could understand Loki’s mindset when it comes to which places they’ll stay in and which ones they’ll leave behind, because he takes one look at the distant shoreline before he asks the station attendant when the next bus in the opposite direction will arrive. She would have liked to linger near the calming wash of the waves awhile longer.

Whatever Loki didn’t like about Savannah, it doesn’t seem to exist in Macon. His tastes in local, it seems, are as weird and varied as his manner of dress. The usual hipster-ish attire has been abandoned for a more comfortable jeans and t-shirt, a blue sock hat pulled over his head, and one of his trademark scarves wrapped around his middle rather than his neck, which Darcy awkwardly ties up in a bow when they exit the bus, worried he’ll trip on it. Any previous thoughts she’d held that Loki subscribed to a certain fashion have been abandoned, because his look for this particular day is as bewildering as the rest of him. He barely acknowledges her when she finishes tying it, his attention absorbed by the city around them. 

It’s not very interesting, at least as far as Darcy’s concerned. It’s a rather bland place, surrounded by fast food restaurants and suburb-lazy cars. To call this a city in comparison to New York would be blasphemy, in her opinion. She follows Loki’s wide-eyed gaze to note a particularly shady looking place called American Feel and Wings, and raises an eyebrow. “Feel?” she asks incredulously. “What the fuck does that mean? Feel isn’t a food, it’s an action? Is it a strip joint?”

“It’s dinner,” Loki hums, practically bouncing with excitement. “I’ve never eaten at a wing place before.”

Darcy grimaces, “I don’t know if you want this to be your first experience with it. And besides, don’t you have a pet chicken? Isn’t this some sort of . . . Isn't it sacrilege, or something?”

Loki rolls his eyes, “No, it’s completely different. Chick is family.” He grabs Darcy by the sleeve of her hoodie and pulls her towards the place without further ado. For a moment she almost tells him that some of their dinner could be Chick’s family, but decides against it because, quite honestly, her curiosity over the Feel in American Feel and Wings is getting the better of her. 

To her utter disappointment, the establishment is not a strip club of any sort. It’s not even Hooters caliber. On the inside, the place seems to be like any other fast food, family friendly restaurant, and when asked about the name the cashier replies that it refers to the “American feel” of the food and atmosphere. And from a quick glance at the other diners, it appears that “American feel” means overweight people and screaming children. Even Loki seems put off by it, which Darcy attributes to the still shrieking kids that are running around the establishment and coming dangerously close to them. While Loki’s good with animals, she’s suspects he might not have the same skills with children, and she carefully steers him closer to the cashier’s counter as a precaution. She’d pay good money to see Loki’s attempts at handling a baby, but now is not the time for that.

Twelve dollars and two number three meals to go later, and she’s managed to get Loki back outside with much less manhandling and scolding than expected. “Children are loud,” Loki says, clutching the bag of food to his chest with a shell-shocked look in his eyes.  

“I get the feeling you weren’t a very loud kid yourself?” Darcy asks as she pushes him towards the stretch of grass underneath the lit-up American Feel and Wings sign. 

“I was never a child. Also, I’m not going to sit on the grass,” he points to the patch of lawn Darcy’s led them to as if it has somehow personally offended him. “It’s the middle of the night and there will be worms.” Darcy ignores him and knees him in the back of the shins, and Loki yells as his legs buckle and he drops to his knees.

“You made me sleep in a dust filled death trap in Thurmond, so now you can put up with sitting on the grass. Think of it as a picnic.” She grabs her box of wings out of the paper bag and takes a seat beside him, unsoldering her backpack and making herself comfortable. Loki scowls, and she meets the expression with a cheeky grin. “Worms never killed anyone, you know.”

Loki huffs. “That doesn’t automatically make them pleasant creatures to encounter.”

“I assume you’ve never fed your birds worms then?”

“Of course not.”

Still pouting, Loki begins to nibble at his own meal, previous enthusiasm for chicken wings subsided. _Like a finicky cat_ , Darcy thinks when she catches him picking at the bones out of the corner of her eye. Loki’s emotions, at least the positive ones, seem to have very short life spans before they’re quickly bottled up and hidden away again. As she watches him grow disinterested in his meal, she tries to recall whether or not she’s even heard him laugh. She suspects it might be somewhat terrifying, similar to when Natasha deigns to offer up one of her foreboding little chuckles. Besides that, she’s not quite sure what would spark that level of amusement in someone like Loki, who is so careful with which emotions he displays. Being consistently stoic does have its benefits, she admits, but so far their misadventures have managed to draw out a handful of other expressions from Loki. Expressions that she happens to like. 

“You’re not one for comedy, are you?” she asks, unable to stop her curiosity from taking control of her voice. 

Loki looks up from his chicken, eyebrows furrowed, “Not especially, no. Why?”

Darcy rubs an embarrassed hand over the back of her neck, “You, ah . . . You don’t laugh much, do you . . .”

“Well I don’t find my current situation on this worm-infested lawn, eating mediocre chicken to be very amusing.” He falls silent when Darcy smacks a hand to her face and quirks the tiniest of smiles. “My brand of entertainment isn’t one most people would deem enjoyable.”

“Thank you, Christian Grey,” Darcy commends with a roll of her eyes. “I guessed as much.”

Loki purses his lips, “I’d rather not be associated with an abusive, sadistic character from a dime-store smut novel, thank you.”

Surprised, Darcy gapes, “You understood one of my references!”

“Unfortunately. And that’s the not the brand of comedy I was referring to. You should be well aware of my areas of amusement by now, I would think.” 

He gifts her with a lingering pat on the shoulder that makes Darcy freeze in surprise. Loki never partakes in such affectionate gestures of his own free will, not unless he has some ulterior motive. Darcy leaps up with a screech as she feels something wiggling and wet slides beneath her shirt and down her back.

“Don’t make me sit with worms again,” Loki smiles at her as he gets to his feet and makes his way towards the road.

Once she’s managed to dislodge the worm from her clothes, Darcy has to run to catch up to him. Loki has stopped beside a trashcan at the edge of American Feel and Wings’ property, and when she approaches he holds out a hand for her now empty box of chicken. She slams it into his palm as hard as she can, frustrated when he barely bats an eye at her before throwing it away. “If that was all you have in you to retaliate with, I’m disappointed,” he sighs.

Darcy bites back her immediate, childish retort of “shut up” in favor of the equally childish, “I’ll get you back later.”

“I’m sure.”

Their bags shouldered again, and no further worms to be found, Loki leads the way down the sidewalk that boarders the road. Though it’s no New York traffic, it is fairly busy, and Darcy finds herself tripping over her own feet in her attempt to keep between the curb and Loki on the too-skinny patch of concrete. She flinches slightly when Loki curls an arm around her shoulder, drawing her closer to him as a bicyclist blazes past just inches away. “Not every touch is an excuse to accost you with bugs,” he says, as if annoyed by her reaction, and he removes his arm as quickly as he’d placed it, hands falling pointedly to his pockets.

If there was any point, Darcy would chastise herself for jumping to conclusions, but it’s far too late. As usual, Loki’s mood has already shifted, and he’s drawn himself away from her once more. His eyes wander away from her and over to their left as they step onto a bridge. “I love rivers,” he says quietly, startling her. She would have thought he’d have sulked for a bit longer. “I almost drowned in one once.”

It takes a moment for this bit of information to sink in, and Darcy whirls on him with a sharp, “What?” as it fully registers. “Why the hell do you love them if one almost killed you?”

Loki tilts his head, “There’s no point in hating the phenomena of the world simply because it’s dangerous. Many things are dangerous.” 

“Yet you hate worms.”

“Worms aren’t dangerous, they’re disgusting.” He stops walking so suddenly that Darcy nearly ends up tangled in him with how close beside she was following. “Plus,” he says, his words eerily languid as they roll off his tongue, “Dangerous things can be fun, in their own way.”

He takes a few steps forward and drops his bag on the sidewalk next to the railing that runs above the water, and a brief glance over his shoulder at her is the only warning Darcy gets before he puts his hands on the metal bars, swings himself over the side, and is gone. 

She stands there for a heartbeat, panic and disbelief warring within her for dominance before she goes with the former, throwing her backpack to the side with an alarmed yell and rushing to the railing. From the surface, the water below doesn’t seem to have much of a current, but she knows better than to assume there’s not one along the river’s deep bed. “Idiot!” she snaps, both to the vanished Loki and herself as she desperately scans the water for a sign of him, a breach in the surface, a ripple, a bubble. A few more agonizing seconds tick by with Loki having yet to appear, and Darcy curses to herself under her breath, and clears the railing in a single, desperate leap.

Despite the distance between bridge and water, the fall barely gives her enough time to suck in a breath before she crashes into the water. _Oh hell_ , she thinks just seconds before her toes brush against river sand and she surges back towards the surface, _oh hell it’s cold_! Late summer or not, the water is already chilled with winter, sending needle pricks across every inch of her skin. She takes a gulp of air as she finds herself with head and partial shoulder above the water for a heartbeat, and she skims the ominously gentle rush around her for a sign of Loki. Every muscle in her body tightens with fear as she fails once again to spot him, and she dives back under without a second thought, hands reaching around blindly in the dark and murk for the body she fears to find.

“Idiot!” she screams when she has to surface for air again, “You fucking idiot!” Back below, she gropes about, shifting through empty currents, her heart rate rising with every panicked second. And, god, she can’t lose him now, can’t let him drown because for one thing, Thor would probably murder her, and for another . . .

Whether she likes it or not, Darcy knows she needs Loki. Maybe not in the same way he needs her, for support and guidance and control, but she needs him all the same. Darcy dives back under after another swift breath, frustrated bubbles escaping her when her fingers brush against sand rather than the body she’s looking for. But she can’t surface yet, it takes too much time, wastes too many precious seconds in which Loki could be drifting away or drowning or-

The little breath she still holds escapes her when a hand presses against her stomach and thrusts her up above the current. She claws at the air for a moment, startled gasps the only sound she’s capable of making until she spots Loki. The man is just standing in the water (god damn his height), one hand holding her up and the other pushing his dripping hair back from his eyes to reveal an annoyingly exasperated expression. “Really now,” he says dully, as if Darcy hadn’t just spent two minutes flailing about like a panicked goldfish looking for him, “The point of this exercise was to prove that I wasn’t some leash-trained dog, not for you to try and drown yourself.”

Darcy considers her options for all of three seconds before she whips her hand up and slaps him across the cheek, smirking when his eyes widen in shock. “Fuck. You,” she spits. “Jumping off a god damn bridge into a river isn’t an exercise, dibshit, it’s suicidal!”

“My point exactly,” Loki hums, too calm for Darcy’s liking. 

She stares at him, “What?”

“You seem to be under the impression, Miss Lewis, that you can find a way to tie me down and curb my more undesirable tendencies and traits.” He rubs at his cheek, and Darcy proudly swears there’s a red handprint on his skin. “To you, danger is something to be avoided in order to survive. But to me, it’s quite the opposite. I thrive on it. I suppose to most that would seem rather twisted, if not flat out sadistic, and I can’t really argue with that. However, if you attempt to train me into thinking otherwise, I’m afraid you will be sorely disappointed.” Tilting his head towards her, Loki adds, “For the most part, reprimands only make me want to rebel all the more.”

“You’re a psycho.”

“So glad you noticed.”

Loki moves his hand from Darcy’s stomach to her back and helps guide her out of  the water and on to the shore. She thinks, for a moment, about ditching him then and there, unnerved by this newest set of revelations. It will do little good, though, and she’s seen what sorts of things Loki gets up to on his own. That’s the one thing that proves him wrong, she realizes while she tries to wring as much river water as possible out of her hair. Maybe she can’t control him, but while he’s in the presence of others, Loki does manage to control himself, whether he recognizes that or not. Technically, there’s not much of a difference. The Loki of now and the Loki who shoots up and smokes are not different people, they’re simply different levels, different layers. And it doesn’t take much for him to shift from one drastic end to another, as seen by the lovely little bridge dive they’d just had. And as much as he loves to shock people, Darcy knows Loki detests disappointing them.

If he didn’t, Darcy doesn’t think he would have ever let her interfere with his addictions. 

“Oh, god, look at my phone,” Darcy whines when she discovers the thing in her pocket, forgotten when she’d jumped into the river after Loki without much of a second thought. “It’s totally ruined.” She holds it towards Loki’s face, scowling as it drips murky river water onto the ground between them. 

Loki raises an eyebrow, “We can just use rice.”

“No amount of rice is going to resurrect a phone that was submerged in that river gunk for two minutes,” Darcy sighs. 

“Rice,” Loki insists again, and when Darcy glances at him she swears he’s all but bouncing on his heels. 

“Uh, do you just want an excuse to go to the store? Because we’re soaking wet and smelly right now and I really don’t-”

Which is exactly how Darcy ends up in the middle of a grocery store with Loki, wondering how exactly she landed herself in that situation. “You can’t ride in the cart,” she says without even looking up from the selves. It’s probably the sixth time she’s said it, if not the seventh, and still Loki persists in attempting to climb into the shopping cart while she isn’t looking. “I’m not going to push you around like a freakin’ child.” She glares at him out of the corners of her eyes, unamused when he daringly puts one foot in the basket. “I’m still pissed at you, you know. So if you’re expecting me to go easy on your ass just because I’m exhausted, think again. Out of the cart.”

Loki pouts, and Darcy mentally reminds herself that strangling him will result in a very pissed off Thor. “But I’m wet and gross and tired,” he complains.

“Who the fuck’s fault is that?” Darcy glowers. “Put one more foot in the cart and I’ll cut that foot off, don’t test me.”

This, apparently, is enough to warrant some sort of silent treatment from Loki, who shuffles along behind her for the remainder of their grocery store adventure without another word between them. For the most part, she’s fine with that. She needs the time to think, to mull over the new information she’s been presented with and decide where to go from there. It’s at times like these that she’s sorely tempted to call Bruce and ask for advice on how to deal with possibly psychotic nincompoops, if only to be reminded that he’s not that kind of doctor and she should learn to deal with this sort of crap on her own if she’s going to run off into the sunset with said possibly psychotic nincompoops. Unfortunately, she can’t call Bruce, or anyone now because her phone is a shorted out, sopping mess at the moment.

One thing about the river incident sticks in her mind and pisses her off more than the broken phone or the way her cold, wet clothes are still clinging to her frame. 

Suicidal.

Loki had admitted he was suicidal. It had been rather offhandedly confessed, but still. Darcy is painfully familiar with suicide, a fact that she hasn’t confessed to most people, and the thought that someone else in her life has contemplated it makes her blood boil. 

_“Eventually she died. They labeled it as suicide but . . . But really, how could they tell if an overdose was a purposeful event, or an accident?”_

As much as she tells herself, weekly, daily, that her mother’s death was most likely a case of accidental rather than intentional overdose, the fact remains that it’s impossible for her to know for sure. Hell, for all Darcy knows it could have been some sort of weird forced-overdose murder. But the means doesn’t matter so much as the result, which had been a scared, skinny little girl left all alone in the middle of the city. And Loki’s a fool if he thinks Darcy’s going to let him, off all people, do that to her again. She pulls the cart to a halt in the middle of the produce section and gestures to it before Loki can even raise an eyebrow in question. “Get in the cart. And while you’re at it you can book us a hotel for the night.”

OoOoOoOoOoO

_The ways parents lie to their children are so numerous there’s no possible way to count them all. For most, the lies are little, almost teasing things, explanations for what they can’t explain to their too-inquisitive three-year old. The sky is blue because God spilled blue paint on it. You should use the toilet because bears live in there and they eat poop and you don’t want the poor bears to starve, do you. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west because it’s being pulled along by a string. Snakes don’t have legs because they ran so fast they fell off. But those little things are harmless, white lies that might confuse a child, but never truly damage them._

_Other lies, however, other lies are crippling._

_Loki’s favorite lie was the first one his father had ever told him. “You were both born to be leaders.”_

_Those words lick at Loki like the first droplets of poison, sinking into him and tainting his veins with every breath because he knows full well it’s a lie. How could it ever be anything but? The line of their family calls for one son to inherit the fortune, one son to lead the family and all it encompasses. One. Never two. And Loki wasn’t fool enough to think such duties and privileges would ever fall to him. “You were both born to be leaders” is just a ruse, an attempt to make them fight for something and somehow prove themselves. It’s a ploy to separate them, to dispel any codependency that might arise, and it fails._

_Because Loki has no desire to tear his brother to the ground, to rip him apart for the sake of something so petty as wealth._

_Until he’s in middle school, Loki honestly believes that lie. He disillusions himself into thinking it somehow means Odin will provide them with joint leadership, or equal power. Rulers and leaders and brothers together forever._

_“The basket carrying Romulus and Remus washed ashore off the River Tibar,” Loki reads aloud from the book that lay open on Thor’s bed. “That was where the she-wolf found them. Called by the babies’ crying, and having no pups of her own to feed, the wolf  took them in as her children, and allowed them to suckle.”_

_“What does suckle mean?” Thor asks, eyes narrowed at the word on the page._

_Loki pauses and stares at it as well, “Something like . . . Sucking? Nursing? Like what babies do, you know. Now let me finish.”_

_“It’s not a very good story if I don’t know what it means,” Thor pouts._

_Ignoring the comment, Loki continues reading. “After awhile, a kindly shepherd found the twins and the mother wolf, and decided to adopt the babies himself. He raised them into strong, proud, noble young men. They never forgot the wolf who had nursed them - see, I told you that’s what it meant - and together, planned to build a city on the spot where they had encountered her as children.”_

_“Rome!” Thor exclaims, awed._

_“Yes. However, the brothers could not agree on where the wolf had found them. They quarreled over which bank of the river it was on, which direction, and which spot of loamy soil. Neither could agree on the location, as they had only been babes at the time. Frustrated with the argument, Romulus eventually slew Remus in the midst of his rage . . .”_

_Loki falters, mouth slightly ajar as he blinks at the sentence printed before him. He places the pads of his fingers over the “slew,” as if hiding it will somehow change what history and legend have already written. “He . . . He killed him. His own brother,” he whispers, both terror and awe echoing in the cracks of his voice._

_Thor flips the book closed while Loki’s fingers still rests against the page. “I don’t like this story anymore,” he says swiftly, sharply, eyes wide as he watches Loki withdraw his hand from the book. “Why did he have to kill him? They could have ruled together, like us. Like we’re going to do. Joint heads of the family.”_

_And that’s the moment Loki knows. He realizes the truth while he searches his palm for paper cuts he swears are stinging but are nowhere to be found. He understands because of how high Thor’s tone is becoming, and how quiet he himself has grown. No, no . . . Odin never meant to split the inheritance between them, never meant for them to be equal._

_Two brothers can both be born to be kings, but in the end, only one can claim the title. And the other? Well, Loki supposes the other is left behind to be food for the wolf who once fed him._

_And he can feel the wolf’s breath on the back of his neck already._

_“No, Thor,” he says softly. “I’m not going to head the family.” He runs a thumb over his lifeline, finally finding the thin cut in the skin that sparks with light, prickling pain when he touches it. “We may not be a monarchy, but we are very set in our ways. Especially father. He will not allow us to share the wealth and responsibility.”_

_Thor starts, “Wha- but he said we were both-”_

_“Just because a child is born to lead does not mean he gets the chance to,” Loki murmurs. “And I’m neither stupid or stubborn enough to delude myself into thinking I can surpass you.” He flashes a cold smile at his brother, “You know how father views my accomplishments in comparison to yours. He loves your sports teams and your games, he goes to every one. Do you remember when I attempted the violin for awhile? He didn’t attend a single one of my concerts.” Loki rolls his shoulders as if it is of little import, though he and Thor both know why the violin has been hidden under the bed for the past year and a half. “I don’t want to draw the matter out until we succumb to the same faults as Romulus and Remus did, Thor.”_

_He doesn’t give much thought to the implications of the words as they leave his mouth, at least not enough to foresee Thor’s reaction. So when Thor grabs him by the arms and shakes him, enough to snap his gaze up and lock his eyes with his brother’s, he can’t help but freeze in surprise, a silent gasp on the tip of his tongue. “I would never,” Thor growls, “Never do something like that to you.”_

_Loki raises a thin eyebrow, “Oh, no. You misunderstood me. While I have no doubt I’d be the one to ultimately pay for the action, I highly doubt you would be the one to initiate such strife.”_

_He watches Thor’s teeth unclench, feels his hands loosen their harsh grips on his arms, and every muscle in his brother’s body go lax with shock._

_Because, no matter how much Loki loves his brother, would go to the ends of the earth for him and die for him, he also knows how easy, and how tempting it might be to destroy him._

_There are as many types of love as there are lies. The childish crushes, the star-crossed lovers, the platonic life partners, the siblings, the parental, and the dangerous._

_To love someone is a curse. And to know that they love you in return, though maybe not in the same manner, is a temptation. For as easy is it is to bring joy to a person’s life with love, it is just as easy to take that life and_

_snuff_

_it_

_out._

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

Loki, for some god unknown reason, manages to pick one of the dingiest motel Macon. With the décor that has seemingly not been changed since the seventies plus the grumpy and slightly spooky old desk clerk, Darcy nearly does a spit take with a soda she doesn’t have when he asks, “One king?” and Loki immediately replies, “Two queens.” She tries to explain the reference to him while they make their way to the room, but he just rolls his eyes.

And that’s fine, she supposes. Darcy never expected them to get along “swimmingly” (as Steve would say). But it stings just a little to see how easily he can dismiss her. 

“Shower,” is all Loki says when they get into the room, and he tosses his bag on the bed closest to the door before making a beeline for the bathroom. Darcy mutters something about “ladies first” under her breath, though by then he’s already closed the door behind him, and even if she’d spoken up he wouldn’t have heard. She considers waiting for him to get out, but after ten minutes pass, and then twenty, she’s just too tired to keep her eyes open any longer, damp, river-smelling clothes or not. Popping her ruined phone into the box of rice, she lets herself collapse onto the other bed, and is out almost immediately.

Waking up a little over an hour later to realize that Loki’s not in the opposite bed, and that the shower is still running, sends a hot flare of panic straight to her gut. “God,” she groans as she swings her legs over the edge of the mattress. “He better not have tried to drown himself in an inch of water.” But for all she jokes and pretends to be put out, Darcy still books it the short distance to the bathroom, heart in her throat at the thought of what she’ll find. 

And she’s not far off. Loki’s leaning over the side of the tub, the shower going full blast at what Darcy can tell even from a distance must be hot enough to burn, and the shower curtain is a crumpled, torn mess on the floor by the toilet. He stares blearily up at her when she bursts through the door, a full-body shiver coursing through him. “I . . .” He falters, “I . . . It’s so cold. I can’t warm up . . .”

The level of sheer terror in his eyes when he says this makes Darcy’s knees buckle, and she reaches behind her to clutch at the door frame to keep herself standing. “Oh god, Loki,” she whispers.

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” he chokes, another violent shudder working its way down his spine from the shoulders down. 

Darcy crosses the room and jerks a hard left on the shower knob, shutting the water off so suddenly that Loki gasps with shock from the change. Her hand is on his forehead less than a second later. “Christ, you’ve got a crazy fever,” she hisses. “We need to get you to a hospital.

She’s barely even twitched in the direction of the door when Loki’s hand snaps up and catches her wrist. “No. No doctors.”

Most people would roll their eyes at such a complaint, but Darcy pauses, glancing between where she can see the hotel phone where it sits on the nightstand through the open bathroom door and Loki curled into one corner of the tub. She’s well aware of the fact that some people have irrational, intense fears about hospitals, but Loki’s fever is off the charts. “Let me call a nurse, then. One of those on call advisement ladies, okay?” Loki doesn’t lessen his grip, though the shivers have reached his fingers and they tremble against Darcy’s wrist. “Lord,” she mutters, “You have the mentality of the world’s most stubborn five year old.”

And that settles it. Even with Loki still persistently clinging to her wrist she manages to snag a couple of towels off the back of the toilet. She rubs him down with one, pointedly ignoring the amount of nakedness in front of her. Once she’s dried him off fairly well, she bundles him up in the second towel and drags him from the tub, cursing at how oddly heavy he is for “Such a weedy little dickwad.” In the bedroom she pulls a sweater and pair of pajama bottoms from her duffle, ignoring his protests about wearing girls clothes when she stuffs him in them and practically drops him onto his bed. He whines when she rolls him under the blankets and tucks them around him so he’s doing a fair impersonation of a very grumpy, shivery burrito. “Shut up.” She reaches for the phone with a warning point and glare in his direction. “I am not equipped to deal with a sick withdrawal patient right now, okay? Not alone. Now be quiet for five minutes while I make this call, or it’s the ambulance for you, got it?”

Loki scowls at her, or at least attempts to underneath the mound of blankets she’s thrown on him from both his bed and hers. 

Darcy sits on the side of the bed while she talks to the nurse over the phone, twirling the chord around her finger. “Hotels must be the only places that still have chords on their phones anymore,” Loki says blearily from where he’s curled under the mass of blankets. Shivers still wrack his body a few times a minute, and Darcy eventually reaches back a hand to rest against his forehead.

“I don’t have a thermometer on hand,” she says into the receiver, “But he’s probably around 104, 105? If I had to hazard a guess? Place a - no, he’s shivering too much for that.”

“Your hand is cold,” Loki murmurs into the blankets, and Darcy retracts it.

“Hydrated. Got it. Is just water okay or should I go pick up orange juice or something? Okay, cool. What about food?”

“No food,” Loki groans.

“He says he’s not hungry. Yeah, he refuses to come in. Bullion cubes? What’s a bullion cube?” She glances at Loki, “Dude, what about just some broth? Like chicken noodle soup with only the liquid.”

Loki shakes his head furiously and seems to immediately regret the decision as a disoriented, rather queasy look crosses his face. He scrabbles at the blankets for a moment, which is more than enough warning for Darcy to hop off the mattress and grab the trashcan. She bids the nurse on the other end of the phone a short “Thank you, bye,” before she’s holding the trashcan up just in time for Loki to lean over the side of the bed and heave up all of his entire American Feel and Wings dinner into it. 

“Gross,” Darcy complains, but she holds her ground, brushing Loki’s hair out of his eyes when he lets out a pitiful moan. “If you hadn’t cut it before we left I’d need to actually hold your hair out of the way like girls do in romcoms.”

“Ha ha,” Loki grits out between gags.

Darcy grimaces when he leans back after a moment and lifts a hand as if to wipe his mouth with the sleeve of his sweater. “Oh, no, dude. No.” She grabs his arm and yanks it back before he can do it. “There’s this thing called napkins, okay? And tissues. And other paper products that are not _my sweater_.” He lifts an eyebrow and she reaches across the bed to snag the complimentary tissue box off the nightstand and shoves it into his hands. “There. Now I’m gonna go get rid of this nastiness,” she gestures at the trashcan, “and get some ice from the thingy in the hall. And you are not going to throw up again until I get back.”

For a heartbeat she thinks he might hold her back, stop her from leaving, and from the torn expression on his face he definitely considers it. But Darcy leaves the room without hindrance, trashbag held as far in front of her as humanly possible. She picks a few clean ones up from the front desk on her way back, swearing to the annoyed-looking attendant that they aren’t having a party and no, they won’t get vomit on the carpets (though she silently thinks that that would be an improvement). Two buckets of ice later, she’s kicking the door to their room closed, cursing as she immediately notices that Loki’s not in bed. 

“God, why . . .” She groans, setting her ice on the nightstand before heading towards the bathroom.

Loki’s hugging the toilet when she enters, and she pulls a hairtie from her pocket to pull her hair back as she approaches. “Yikes,” she says when she sees how pale he is, which is saying something because she’s fairly certain Loki was born sun-bleached. “Do you need help? Or are you good?” He shakes his head and Darcy frowns. “Is that a ‘No, I don’t need help,’ or a ‘No, I’m not good.’” His reply, or lack there of, comes out as a full-body shudder and retch, and Darcy drops down to her knees beside him without further ado. “Okay, okay. I’ve got this, I am totally first aid certified. Or I was that one time I took a babysitting class with Clint in high school.” Loki takes a moment to send her a sharp, “ _Now is not the time for jokes_ ” look before he’s heaving over the toilet again. 

Darcy rubs a hand over his back in a slow circle. “Maybe . . . Maybe we should call Thor.”

“No,” Loki says immediately, “I don’t want . . . He doesn’t need my stupidity on his hands.” He dips his head towards the toilet bowl again and Darcy purses her lips. 

“You’re not stupid-”

“You called me an idiot just a few hours ago. Repeatedly.”

“Idiocy in action doesn’t make idiocy in mind,” Darcy snaps. “And I’ll be the first to tell you you’ve done some pretty stupid shit, Loki. But I’m a hundred percent sure you knew exactly what the hell you were doing every time you did it. You knew it was stupid, and did it anyways.”

Loki eyes her, still way too pale and way too shivery for Darcy’s comfort. “Would that not make me doubly as stupid?”

“No. It makes you self destructive. Which for most people is a sign of desperation or hopelessness. Not stupidity.” Darcy clenches her fingers against his back when he gags over the toilet again. “Christ, you’re just dry heaving now. That’s not good.”

“The running commentary is not appreciated,” Loki hisses. “And I’m not . . . Self destructive.”

Darcy narrows her eyes, “I think I know self destructive when I see it. And people who do shit like this to their bodies and jump off of bridges and confess to suicidal tendencies are self destructive. My mom was like that.”

The speed at which Loki turns away from the toilet and towards her catches her off guard, and she jumps back, her shoulders knocking against the wall. “Is that why you’re here?!” he chokes out, utter fury in his eyes. “Because you’re trying to, what, fix me to make up for what happened to you mother?!”

“I - No! That’s not-”

“Get out!” 

He swings an arm towards her as if to strike her, and Darcy catches it on the way down just inches from her face. “Whoa! Hold on-”

“Out!” 

Loki brings his other hand around and she catches that one two, both now held tight in her grasp. She has no doubt that, if he were well, he’d have no problem escaping her grip, but with the way he’s shaking, there’s no way he can do it now. “Jesus, Loki!” she gasps when he tries to struggle. “I’m not that fucking shallow! My mom is supposed to be the cautionary tale, not my motivation! What is your problem with people who try and give a shit about you? Not everyone in the world has ulterior motives!”

“Yes they do!” he howls. Darcy has a hard time keeping her grip on him when he tries to twist away from her this time, actually starting to put some muscle into his efforts. “They always do! I’m always a tool or a treasure or an object with which someone can vent their frustrations. I’m the one they turn to when things don’t go their way because I’m what they settle for. Second best. I’m always second best to everyone! It’s not fair!”

And, well, Darcy doesn’t really know what to say to that. Because she knows at least a little of what occurred between Loki and Tony, can guess what might have gone down between Loki and his family, and can see with her own eyes how drastically different the love Loki holds for Thor is compared to what Thor holds for him in return. So as bitter as it tastes in her mouth, she knows he’s not wrong to say such things.

Second best love, second best son, second best . . . Whatever the hell he and Thor are to each other. And he’s right, it isn’t fair, and it shouldn’t be that way, but . . .

But admitting that and knowing that won’t change anything. 

“Okay,” Darcy says finally, voice barely above a whisper. “Okay.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's way too early in the morning for me to say anything intelligent about this part other than sorry not sorry it's so fucking depressing what did you expect with a Loki-centric fic

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, there will be more of this posted in sections of about 10K every few days. Once this thing is done, I will return to So No One Told You to start the third arc. But while this fic isn't completely necessary to read to understand So No One Told You, it would probably help your understanding of a lot of things that will be going on in arc 3.


End file.
